First Chapter

When I’m working on something new, as I am now, I find myself returning day after day to my first chapter (as it stands in that moment.) I read it aloud, I skim it, I turn it over and over in my mind – making sometimes minor, sometimes major adjustments. One day I’ll rewrite just a word, phrase or sentence. On another, I’ll just be making deletions. A week on and I might just write something completely new and start my story in a whole new way. And then there’ll come the days when I change nothing. But I reread it again anyway.

 

I know I have much to do to move the story onwards but I also know that returning time after time to the first chapter, the opening paragraph, the first line helps me to move forwards. It reminds me of the spark of the idea I had when I first sat down to write it and it’s a message to myself that it’s still there with me, months (and sometimes years) after I wrote what I imagined would be the first line.

 

I find taking myself back to the tone that I set out to achieve, over and over again, and questioning myself as to whether it’s doing that means the writing stemming from that beginning can flow.

 

Ultimately if I can make sure that the first chapter makes me want to keep writing, then it will hopefully, one day, make a reader want to keep reading too.